A main selection in History Book-of-the-Month Club and alternate
selection in Military Book-of-the-Month Club.
In the spring of 1862, many Americans still believed that the Civil War,
"would be over by Christmas." The previous summer in Virginia, Bull Run,
with nearly 5,000 casualties, had been shocking, but suddenly came word
from a far away place in the wildernesses of Southwest Tennessee of an
appalling battle costing 23,000 casualties, most of them during a single
day. It was more than had resulted from the entire American Revolution.
As author Winston Groom reveals in this dramatic, heart-rending account,
the Battle of Shiloh would singlehandedly change the psyche of the
military, politicians, and American people--North and South--about what
they had unleashed by creating a Civil War.
In this gripping telling of the first "great and terrible" battle of the
Civil War, Groom describes the dramatic events of April 6 and 7, 1862,
when a bold surprise attack on Ulysses S. Grant's encamped troops and
the bloody battle that ensued would alter the timbre of the war.
The Southerners struck at dawn on April 6th, and Groom vividly recounts
the battle that raged for two days over the densely wooded and poorly
mapped terrain. Driven back on the first day, Grant regrouped and
mounted a fierce attack the second, and aided by the timely arrival of
reinforcements managed to salvage an encouraging victory for the
Federals.
Groom's deft prose reveals how the bitter fighting would test the mettle
of the motley soldiers assembled on both sides, and offer a
rehabilitation of sorts for Union General William Sherman, who would go
on from the victory at Shiloh to become one of the great generals of the
war. But perhaps the most alarming outcome, Groom poignantly reveals,
was the realization that for all its horror, the Battle of Shiloh had
solved nothing, gained nothing, proved nothing, and the thousands of
maimed and slain were merely wretched symbols of things to come.
With a novelist's eye for telling and a historian's passion for detail,
context, and meaning, Groom brings the key characters and moments of
battle to life. Shiloh is an epic tale, deftly told by a masterful
storyteller.
